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Tag: French

I didn’t think the world needed yet another cartoon series, but this one is pretty good. It’s based off a series of French books (“Les Pyjamasques”) which gives it a certain je-ne-said-quois that differentiates it from the standard cookie cutter format of most American shows.

The idea is of three kids who have superpowers and solve crimes at night as Catboy, Owlette and Gekko (not ‘Gecko’), and they learn valuable lessons about friendship, teamwork, yada yada.

Disney is behind this, so expect the usual flood of board games and figures and spinoff games, etc. The cartoon is very wholesome, though, so I don’t mind.

They have their own official YouTube channel with live streaming of new videos, and the series is also currently streaming on Netflix.

Known simply as ‘Un livre’ (a book) in its original French publication, ‘Press Here’ is a fun book that our kids enjoyed and wanted to read again and again. Of all our books, this one has probably been physically damaged the most through heavy use. The book asks the reader to press colored dots on the page, blow them, and tilt the book to slide them around. There are no electronics in the book, on the contrary the images are very clearly hand-painted and non-computer-generated-looking. So, the dots don’t actually move – you have to turn the pages to see what happens as a result of your actions.

For children used to interacting with the touch-screens of phones and tablets, the ‘old-fashioned’ medium of a printed book asking them to interact with it turns out to be a delight.

The author has written several other books for children, all fun, and many of which also include the dynamic of the book being treated as a physical object, and not just a set of printed pages.